So Long, Speedwell

            Where I come from, back in Lititz, everyone who lives there knows about Speedwell Forge. Ask anyone and they will recount tales of kayaking or swimming or picnics by the water. Every local went there to fish and shoot the shit. A friend of mine lived nearby it. He lives on the wolf sanctuary that’s close to the forge. After his girlfriend dumped him, in a fit of anger, he threw all of the things she gave him into the water. A man on a riding mower tipped his machine into the edge of the water just a couple years back. The mower flipped and trapped him under the water and he drowned. So, everyone knows Speedwell Forge.

            I did some research and found out that Speedwell Forge was 500 acres of land that my town dammed up back in the 1960s. Adjacent to it, they also built a park.

            Now, Speedwell is no more.

            Because of the rains and the time that’s passed, cracks began to form in the dam. And because of the economic downfall that is happening all over the nation, the town doesn’t have the money to keep up with the cost of the dam. After the recent insane rains, the crack got worse. So the town decided the only logical thing to do was to drain the water. My brother just sent me photos of what the lake looks like now. It’s shocking to see such a change. My friend and apartment-mate who is also from my hometown was outraged when she saw the pictures. The first thing out of her mouth was, “What about the turtles? And the birds and fish and other wildlife?”

            That wasn’t even my first thought when I heard the news about the draining a few months back. My first thought was: Gee, I wonder what sort of things they’ll uncover when they drain it. But my friend had the right idea. What will happen to the wildlife? My town destroyed the land before when they flooded the area and dammed it up half a century ago. Whatever was there before was destroyed. Then wildlife moved in. Fish were stocked. Life went out. Now we’ve reversed the process. After all these animals have made their homes in that general area, we’ve destroyed their habitat once again.

            And the more I think on it, the less shocked I am about the need to drain it but the more shocked I become about my town’s audacity to play God. It’s just another case of humans leaping before they look and really weigh all the options.

Fracking in the Courtroom

            It was brought up in my Torts and Personal Injury class, but there is a court case beginning in North Dakota concerning the regulation of fracking. The case could cost $1 million to fight the Environmental Protection Agency concerning regulation.

            Really??? They want to fight the EPA so that they can frack to their heart’s content?

            We just finished reading A Civil Action in my Torts class, which is a book chronicling the court case of dozens of civilians from Woburn, MA who sued two large corporations because they poisoned their water wells. Every single person in the action got leukemia or some other carcinogenic disease. Many died from it before the case was even tried. Then there’s always the example of Erin Brockovich’s case, made famous due to a film made on it. Everything needs water to live. When you risk lives by polluting water just to make money, there has to be something fundamentally wrong with you.

            Just in Pennsylvania, since 2009, there have been reported cases of water being poisoned and highly toxic levels of chemicals in the air due to fracking in the area. That’s just Pennsylvania. I have provided a link to a site below with several more instances of toxicity and illness associated with this oil-obtaining process. There are known toxins being used in this process and still the fracking continues.

            Are people so desperate for oil that they would risk an essential element for life? I am shocked and astounded by the lack of forward thinking. There is a careless disregard for the lives around the fracking sites, a reckless disregard for the immediate future of thousands of people, and a wonton disregard for generations to come. The EPA is in place for a reason: to protect the environment in which we live as well as to protect us. Apparently, it’s now become a job to protect us from ourselves and our foolish decisions.

           

Newspaper Article:

            http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9QO44HO0.htm

Hazards of Fracking:

            http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fracking

OMG This Campus...

            Frankly, I am offended by this campus.

            For my final project, I am doing littering on college campuses. So for the powerpoint portion of the assignment, I took my camera and took photographs of trash I found littered around campus. I was a bit short on time, so I ended up taking pictures mainly around my apartment complex and the University Place dorm. Adjacent to that area is the university’s shuttle stop. There was tons of trash in just that particular area. I had a bag along with me and I picked up everything after I got a photo og it. I was pleased with the seventeen photographs for the project and pleased with the trash no longer littering my campus or obstructing an otherwise pretty view. The next morning, I walked to the shuttle stop to catch a ride to my Spanish class. And what do I see?! More trash! There was even more garbage than I had picked up the day before. Fliers and cans and plastic silverware and bags…it was ridiculous.

            It’s such a disheartening thing to see. After I spent my free time cleaning up other peoples’ abandoned refuse, I return to find my effort a moot point. What was the most interesting thing was that Cat brought up the idea of disrespect in class yesterday, after I’d begun this blog post. She was suggesting the idea of proposing the creation of a town garden in Kutztown and she wanted to know what our reactions to it. It was a resounding “no!” that the garden be on campus. One of the students (or was it the professor) suggested that some of the green lawn near Old Main be used for such a garden, as a way to create a communal project here on campus. Cat said, and rather fiercely so, that the students on this campus were too disrespectful for such a project. The entire class seemed to agree to that.

            And just yesterday evening, my friend and I were discussing the trash on this campus. Since I’ve begun this class, she said she’s been paying way more attention to the litter on campus and just noticing the issue we truly have. We talked about the increase of litter this year. We’re not sure what exactly is the culprit (decrease of care, decrease of respect, increase of uncaring freshman, etc) but whatever the reason, it’s disgusting.

            Then I was walking to class this morning and saw the lawn maintenance people keeping up on the appearance of the campus. What I find so ridiculous is how they spend their time. However, it’s entirely possible I just don’t see all that they do. But they spend their time sucking up leaves that have built up against the curbs and mowing the lawn to keep it green rather than littered with nature’s refuse: leaves. Can’t they leave the leaves alone and deal with more important things?

Videos on Population and Sustainability

            In place of class for today, we had to watch and read several reports concerning population and the environment. The one video was about big brand companies changing the entire face of the planet just by changing their products’ sustainability. He started by saying that population is a problem, but the issue of famine isn’t just weather; more often than not, famine is caused by policies and politics. Humans cause the starvation of other humans. He called for people and companies to begin working with those they wouldn’t normally work with. In doing so, we can create big changes. The speaker also said that “you need to manage this planet as though our life depended on it, because it does.” That quote stuck out to me in his speech because it’s so simply stated but so absolutely true. People take the issue of overpopulation and product sustainability rather flippantly because they refuse to see the impact it’s having globally. Then he went on to show that 100 companies control 25% of the top 15 commodities; if these companies change how they manufacture their products, life on Earth can really begin to change. Just by making more efficient use of raw material and using less and less of the land, we can begin to decrease the issue of sustainability and feeding such an immense population. I really latched onto the idea that these large companies need to make the decision of sustainability for the future for us, rather than waiting for individuals to demand it. I’m not foolish or naïve enough to think that everyone will always think for the greater good in mind or act with intelligence. I agreed with the idea that these large, controlling companies need to make the decisions for us in order to create a better future. It’s impossible to control population one at a time. People will argue about rights and necessity until the cows come home. But companies can make a proactive effort in doing more with less and balancing out the population/consumption issue. And what was most amazing of all was the idea that these companies can make these changes without impacting anyone’s life. If I sit and think about it too long, it will tick me off because it meant that these companies had the ability and technology to make a change before and simply chose not to. But I cannot look back in anger; I can only try to look forward with hope and a cautious eye.

            The second video we had to watch was about tribal resources. I was struck by the early parts of the video that this education program in South Dakota was making sure to start young when teaching about nature. Rather than waiting until people are settled into their ways and busy with their lives, this program was approaching children at an impressionable age to show them how life should really be lived. People are meant to be one with nature, not separated and isolated from it. Everything in nature impacts us as we impact it in return. You have to start young to teach kids about respecting everything: from the plants to the horse that could easily kill us with one wrong throw. Throughout the video, over and over again, was the idea of community. I’ve said it in previous posts and the theme keeps popping back up. The most we see ourselves as part of a community, the better off we will be. Being in a community makes us less selfish and forces us to act for the greater good. Whether it be an educational after school program where children are working together to pain and clean, or a town making a communal garden that everyone needs a hand in supporting: it all boils down to respecting the earth and respecting one another.

Native American Texts

     For class, we read two texts written by Native Americans in the 1960s and 197-0s. I was most struck by the complete lack of anger in the readings. I would not find myself so calm if I were in their positions. After thousands of years of inhabiting this land, a foreign force with malicious hearts and more advanced weapons took everything from the Native American tribes. Suddenly, every subsequent generation had to learn, and learn quickly, to cope with the new land they were allotted. I’d be livid. I would be ranting and raving about this injustice to everyone who would listen to me. I would write every single day with scathing language in the futile hope that someone with power and authority would help. But there was mostly a resigned sadness in the tone of these two works. Leslie Marmon Silko writes of sneakily cutting wire fences built around miles of land that used to belong to the local tribes. He and his friends could have very easily stuck up their middle fingers and systematically hacked away at the fencing. But this does not happen. Instead, he is sneaky and snake-like in cutting the wire, waiting until nightfall to begin his work. “Their lies will destroy this world,” he say, the “they” being the white people. Personally, I did not feel any heat in this comment. There was no rage behind it, no anger with the destruction of the land or the natural order of life.

            I also noted the respect of the land I have never noticed in “white” writing. Native Americans have lived off the land in a more intimate way then I could ever experience in my lifetime. I love nature; I appreciate what it gives and the awe-inspiring aesthetics of it. But Native Americans lived and died by the land. They worked with it and alongside it. Nowadays, we work against it or merely exploit it. I can just see the intense reverence for the Earth no one can fake.

            It’s also a showcase of how our destruction hurts people. Some individuals, or a great many individuals, scoff at the destruction. They can try to claim we needed that exorbitant number of animals or that those forests are fine to just be felled. But what we’ve done and what our forefathers have done had disrupted and obliterated the lifestyle of an entire race. And that’s a fact you can’t brush off.